Rock Paper Scissors

Water.

water to rub rock smooth water to rust scissors shut
water to dissolve paper into nothingness
then return it to the cannibal trees

waterwaterwaterwaterwaterwaterwater

water to rise and sweep under then away
water to drown and drag down deep
into depths less studied than space

water we drill to quench our thirst
water we carry sloshing on our heads
tongues out to catch escaped drops

water trapped in pipes carried through streets
water bursting through concrete now a waterfall
on Sligo finding freedom in the sewer

water frozen in glaciers melting in sheets
water made of millennia old molecules
crashing into the waiting waves

water filling the mountain lake and the river and the pond
water home to the fish frog crab whale
sonic songs carried by currents tens of thousands of miles

water called by the moon rushing the shore
water laughinglaughinglaughing as it rejoins the sea
rises into the air comes back again as rain

Glenstone I (Satellite)
After Simone Leigh, 2022

I have come to you truly devoted
as though white smoke and incense
blew around the round bowl of your head.
It is Mother’s Day and my own mother
is far away, but not, praise be, yet dead.
Still I practice finding other mothers
like you, iron stemmed and heavy breasted,
an invitation to suckle on your rusting steel teat
and crack my teeth. You could shelter me.
I could hide between the hollow of your legs,
return to some damp tunnel deep inside you.
The world is becoming too much these days.
The bodies of the mothers are piling up.
The orphans now form a chorus.
I came here to find out if you hear them.
And do you know how to make them stop?

Glenstone II (Sentinel)
After Simone Leigh, 2021

While we were hunkered down and bunkered, masked and fully flasked,
Simone was making a masterpiece. I sit at the feet of the Sentinel,
at first a watersnake skinned Eve, then Mami Wata, snake charmer.
She is erect and imposing, thighs, buttocks, nipples bronze and firm,
not just a ten but ten feet tall. Who has captured who in a chokehold?
She appears to have cast her lot with the devil. He has always liked to dance
and does so on beat. Take a bite, the fresh flesh sliding down your throat.
There is nothing to repent given our innocent origins, no hell could hold us.
She swallows our sin and spits out soul, promising survival in exchange for devotion.
We’ve been made offers of worse, so even after balancing ballast in the hull
even after sloshing across the ceaseless sea, salt burning into our wounds,
even after slipping onto foreign shores, sand soaked with blood, pus, and shit
we are faithful children descending from the ship to claim all we are due,
dutiful descendants rising, a menacing mass of mulattos defying definition.
We choose scales over chains and weigh the cost of our victory in bones.
Mami Wata instructs us to shed skin. We coil and curl ourselves free, lunging
into the night air like galaxies unleashed, the universe all to ourselves.

Lesley Younge is an educator and writer from Silver Spring, Maryland. Her work has appeared in Poetry, West Trade Review, MQR Mixtape, and others. She debuted as an author in 2023 with two books for young people. Nearer My Freedom (co-authored with her mentor Monica Edinger) is an award winning YA verse novel remix of British abolitionist Olaudah Equiano’s autobiography. A-Train Allen, her first picture book, was an inaugural Own Voices, Own Stories Grand Prize Winner awarded by Sleeping Bear Press. Originally from Los Angeles California, Lesley attended New York University and Bank Street College of Education, where she discovered a passion for supporting young people’s learning. She currently teaches middle school English in Washington D.C. This is her 20th year in the classroom. Lesley is a fellow of Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Hurston/Wright Foundation and Anaphora Literary Arts. She blogs and shares resources at teacherlesley.com

Featured image in this post is, “Twelve Apostles at Port Campbell National Park, Princetown, Victoria, Australia (2019)” by Dietmar Rabich, licensed via creative commons 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.